Rod McQueen's Blog, page 9

Going for baroque

Who could have imagined the new Pierre Poilievre? Not me. One day he’s a geeky, bespectacled nonentity, and the next day he’s sleek, newly sartorial, with a swirled head of hair and eyes that see and can be seen. Put it all together and I’d almost call him handsome.
I cannot imagine the hours of staff meetings that went into this transformation. Well, as a former political staffer to another leader who had image problems, in fact, I can well imagine. A journalist was commissioned to write a magazine piece on my leader, Robert Stanfield, and we foolishly allowed said writer to sit in on a staff meeting. When the article appeared we were surprised just how much time we’d spent discussing the leader’s image.  
But we made no progress. Poilievre has. Coincident with his makeover, some polling is circulating that that has him five or six percentage points ahead of Justin Trudeau nationally. To be sure, that doesn’t necessarily translate into seats, but it is said that Poilievre is doing well in some of the Toronto ridings where Conservatives have won in the past, but not recently. If that’s the case, then there are other regions in the country where Poilievre has made headway. It is a political truism that Toronto is the last to know.
My favourite political columnist, Andrew Coyne of the Globe and Mail, has written extensively of late how Trudeau might be returned after a close election because, as prime minister, he can meet the house, and call a vote. With the continued support of the New Democratic Party, he could hang on to power. What Coyne has not factored into his equation is the number of seats the NDP might have. At the moment, they have 25, but I doubt they will command that high a number after an election. NDP voters in the past haven’t liked supporting Liberals. They might stay home or vote Green.
Nor has Coyne made much of the idea of Poilievre combined with the Bloc Québécois. The Conservatives have 116 seats, the BQ 32 for a total of 148. The Liberal-NDP consortium have 183. I can see the possibility for Poilievre and the BQ to have more seats after an election than the Liberal-NDP duo. 
Did Poilievre’s do-over work? Absolutely. The country is taking a closer, more positive look. I’d bet my next haircut on him.

Smokin’ mad

At the Major League Baseball Home Run Derby the other night, we viewers were treated to a wondrous version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” by American Idol winner Iam Tongi. When he was done, T-Mobile Stadium in Seattle resounded with cheers.
And that was it. There was no “O Canada” sung by Tongi or anyone else despite the fact that the Toronto Blue Jays had the third-highest number of players in the game after the Tampa Bay Rays and the Texas Rangers. Tongi later apologized for not taking off his hat during his warbling but Canadians got no acknowledgement for our anthem going missing. And this after I have stood in Rogers Stadium I don’t know how many times listening patiently to the U.S. anthem.
What gives? Have we not apologized enough for the smoky air in the U.S. because of our forest fires? We’re good at that. Apologizing, I mean.
And the atrocities continued in the Derby as a bunch of batters tried to hit as many homers as they could in a designated period of time. When it was all over, the winner was Vladimir Guerrero Jr. of the Blue Jays. Vlady made the win even more heartfelt because it was the first time a father-and-son duo had ever won the Derby. His father won fifteen years ago. Then Canada got sideswiped all over again when they announced Vlady’s victory and said he was born in Cuba. What the blazes? He’s a Canadian, born in Montreal.
I’m afraid that such atrocities are not limited to baseball. During the program aired on the occasion of the 4th of July celebrations in Washington, the only two singers who performed were both female: Alanis Morissette and Shania Twain. You might recognize both as Canadians but there was no announcement of their nationality. They appeared on the U.S. network Independence Day show just like they hailed from Cheyenne and Chicago respectively. What do we have to do to get a little respect around here? 
Here’s an idea. Let’s stop apologizing for everything, all rise in our places and sing “O Canada” as loudly as we can. That’ll really smoke them, eh?

No way out

My definition of a conflict of interest goes like this: If you have to think about it, you probably have a conflict. I hereby declare that I knowingly have a conflict but I’m going to write anyway about the proposed merger between Postmedia, a public company, and Nordstar Capital, run by Jordan Bitove.
Here are my two conflicts. I used to work at Postmedia. Indeed, I was among the first group of National Post journalists fired in 2001, a week after 9/11. Postmedia has fired hundreds more journalists in the last twenty-two years and never once made a profit, proving that fewer can never make more. My second conflict is that I know Bitove. We’re not close, but he has certainly made all the right noises about keeping a strong newsroom at the Toronto Star. In fact, he and his former partner came apart because of this issue. 
My first fond hope is that the Competition Bureau will scotch this proposed new deal. So, since I’ve taken to talking Scottish, let me offer a response to my own wish, “A hae ma doots.” The Bureau doesn’t seem to have the strength to get up in the morning let alone do something useful. Postmedia owns thirty-seven newspapers. Nordstar has seven. No one would make a bet on all forty-four titles still being alive a year after any approved merger.
Ironically, the result will be newsworthy. Journalists who still have jobs will lay crepe on the graves while worrying about their own skin. Readers will mourn for a day or two and then go back to getting their news from Apple or some other online freebie. Meantime, I will be the first to admit that I am among the many who read far fewer newspapers and magazines than I used to. I have pretty much limited myself to the Globe and Mail (thank goodness for the deep pockets of the Thomson family) and the New York Times which says it has 9.7 million subscribers of its print and digital products. I no longer read Time, Newsweek or Maclean’s, another former employer. Whatever happens next, no good is going to come of this for journalists and readers alike.

Walking off the field

In a world where the Saudis have taken over the PGA Golf Tour, money is everything. Even those professional golfers who scoffed when the Saudis set up their own tour last year – and lured away some big names with massive payments – are now on side. Rory McIlroy, my favourite player, refused to join the Saudis despite being offered a reported $300 million. He’s apparently okay with the new arrangement. Word is that he might get that mullah moolah after all. 
The Toronto Blue Jays have decided to join the greed gang. A friend of mine has been a Jays subscriber since that first game in the snow at CNE Stadium in 1977. During all that time, he has been joined by others who split his tickets. After all, few individuals can go to 81 home games a year. As a result, there are about eight of us who share. Some take as many as ten pairs; others as few as four pairs. The seats are excellent, so excellent that the Jays are licking their lips in glee.
About a month ago, we learned that the Jays would be charging about 30 percent more next year for the same seats. That was acceptable. After all, they had just spent $200 million on upgrades to the stadium. They also said the seats would be larger, padded, and would come with free snacks.
But the Jays then had second thoughts and devised a new scheme. They said at the end of this season they would literally take back “our” seats. We would then be offered an opportunity to try and secure a new pair of seats from them with little chance of maintaining the same authentic “in the action” experience as we had previously enjoyed. We were, in effect, put at the back of the line. And even if we did proceed, we had to sign up for a two-year commitment for what would be much more expensive for undoubtedly lesser seats. As you might imagine, my friend, the seat-holder for 46 year, declined.
Michael Douglas starred as Gordon Gekko in the 1987 movie, “Wall Street.” You remember the scene, I’m sure, when he famously declared to the audience, “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good!” Maybe for some. But not for us little folks at the bottom of the pile.

The name game

So much in business is based on perception, from the feel of a handshake to faith in the system, that it’s hard to imagine the suffering of a man burdened by an unusual name. Take David Pecker, the former CEO of American Media, who had a role in the hush money payment that kept Donald Trump’s name out of National Enquirer. Being stuck with a surname of that ilk must haunt a man throughout his natural born days.
Just as a surname can mark a man in business, nicknames can backfire badly. Look at what happened to “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap, a downsizing denizen whose claim to fame was firing thousands of employees at Scott Paper Co. When he failed to achieve a similar killing-fields turnaround at Sunbeam Corp., he was himself turfed.
Some nicknames are so nonsensical that they don’t seem to suit their wearer, like Stuart “Bull Moose” Mackersy, one-time head of the Imperial Bank of Canada. After Imperial merged with The Canadian Bank of Commerce in 1961, Mackersy became chairman of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and was best known for taking a daily nap in his office after lunch.
The most sophisticated name I’ve ever known in Canadian business had to be the one borne with honour by Osler, Hoskin lawyer Gordon Dorward de Salaberry Wotherspoon. His friends called him “Swatty,” a nickname rendered even more unlikely by the fact it was also applied to his brother, children, and nephews.
As for me, as close as I came to claiming any kind of name status was my erstwhile association with Steve McQueen. In France, where the movie star remained popular long after his career had faded elsewhere, I used to make restaurant reservations by telephone then try to be helpful with the spelling of my surname by explaining, “Comme le vedette, Steve.” Like the star, Steve. The result was much excitement over this pathetic attempt at riding on someone else’s coattails until I showed up and the maître d’ realized that I was not Steve, and furthermore, he was dead, and I was nowhere near as handsome. My excellent table often became instead the one by the kitchen door. So cheer up, Mr. Pecker, you’re not the only one who has suffered in the name game.

 

A modest proposal

There’s been a lot of talk about who should replace our late Queen on the $20 bill. King Charles is an obvious candidate, but let’s consider some alternatives first. We sure don’t need another former prime minister. We already have Sir Wilfrid Laurier on the $5, Mackenzie King on the $50, and Robert Borden on the $100. Queen Elizabeth is also on the $1,000 bill so there are actually two openings available, although I can’t imagine anyone other than a criminal actually having any $1,000 bills.
Former Finance Minister Bill Morneau made a brilliant choice when he selected Viola Desmond for the $10 bill, thereby picking a woman of colour who made an important statement about civil and women’s rights. In that same mode, for our $20 bill, we could go with someone like D’Arcy McGee, Canada’s first nationalist, who was assassinated for his trouble. Or Louis Riel, who fought for Metis rights. Poundmaker, the rebellious Cree leader who was recently exonerated for his treasonous ways, is another possible honouree. Or, if we sought to go totally consumer-oriented, we could use the Shopify logo, a tribute to all Canadian start-ups.
But here’s my modest proposal: Andrew Jackson. Yes, he’s on the US$20 bill, and my idea is that we seize this opportunity to ditch the C$ and embrace American currency. Think of the ease of traveling to winter vacations in Florida or Arizona using the cash already in your pocket. With our dollar valued at a paltry 73 cents U.S., our lives would be vastly improved because we’d no longer pay that one-third premium on goods coming into Canada that were priced in U.S. dollars.
Just think about the number of items we buy that are made in the U.S. or abroad that are already priced in US currency before they cross our border: fruit, vegetables, books, clothing, manufactured goods, household appliances, you name it. A currency switch to the US$ would add one-third to everyone’s purchasing power and mean your paycheque or pension goes much further. |
Such a spurt to spending would boost our economy and keep interest rates lower than they otherwise might be. Adopting the US$ would also mean that our productivity would improve from the depths of despair where it now sulks. Canadian exporters who have enjoyed a built-in advantage because of the cheap C$ would have to change their lazy ways and become more competitive.
The US$. What’s not to like?

I want to be a CEO

My name is Rod McQueen and I want to be a CEO. Not one of those home-based businesses or some tiny tech firm, I’m scaling the corporate cliffs and getting ready for the pinnacle by looking like I deserve to be there.
First, I have to assemble the appropriate accoutrements. There will be no casual Fridays, puh-leez. I plan to get myself a few Kiton suits (at $10,000 each), a raft of Brioni shirts ($800 each), and a shelf-full of Ferragamo shoes ($1,000 per pair), and then accessorize the dress-for-success wardrobe with a top-of-the-line Cartier watch costing up to $250,000. Or maybe a Bulova from Amazon.
Hats are a rarity, but they can make a man. Maybe I’ll riff off the black beret worn by Jozef Straus, founder of JDS Uniphase. In a gesture as egalitarian as it was generous, Straus bought 20,000 berets so that he could give one to anybody who asked. I’ll give away Tilley hats so that everyone on the Aegean cruise knows I’m Canadian because no one else on earth wears a silly Tilley.
And I want to be able to smoke cigars in my office like Tony Fell, former head of RBC Dominion Securities, despite the fact that the entire building was supposed to be smoke-free. Fell’s cigar of choice was the spicy Montecristo #4. I’ll smoke the #5. It sounds bigger.
But I know full well that all of those trappings pale beside the most essential characteristic of a CEO: jargon. I’ve already been practicing this line: “You’ve got to walk the walk and talk the talk.” As I understand it, the dirtiest little CEO secret is that jock talk exists specifically to keep women out of the executive suite. That’s why so many phrases CEOs use are lifted directly from team sports, hunting, and the military.
When I get to the top, I’ll use merger and acquisition terminology that’s explicitly sexual because it’s all about seduction or, if the bid is hostile, rape. When a target company allows a potential acquisitor to look at the books before making a bid, that’s called “opening the kimono,” “raising your skirts,” or “lifting the veil.” Count me in favour of all those activities.
A final note about arms and the man. If, as CEO, I remove my suit jacket at a meeting, I’m not overheated. I’m a medieval warrior removing my armour, trying to fool you into thinking that my guard is down when it’s not. In my CEO world, chivalry is long since dead. Long live the king!

 

Hooked for life

I was talking recently to a friend with whom I worked at the London Free Press. He still lives in London and told me that the Free Press building was being demolished. Demolished, I thought, it was just built in 1965. Then I thought, oops, that was fifty-eight years ago. We must have been teenagers at the time.
I was lucky enough to win the London Free Press Editorial Award as a result of writing a high school news column in Guelph, my home town. The award paid for half my tuition at what is now Western University plus $1,000 ($10,000 in today’s money), for working summers at the Free Press. The Free Press was where I began learning how to write because editors would throw stories back in my face and say things like, “This needs more interviews,” or “The lede is the in the fourth paragraph.”
The paper had four morning editions dispatched to the four corners of the compass from Windsor to Waterloo, Port Dover to Wiarton. In the evening there were two more editions, one for London home delivery, and a second “bulldog” edition with late news and closing markets. The outside four pages were pink. There were bureaus in Sarnia, Strathroy, Woodstock, and St. Thomas plus local stringers in numerous communities. There were about twenty reporters in the newsroom (all men except for Lenore Crawford who wrote about arts and culture), plus a separate department of female journalists who did stories on cooking, gardening, clubs, and crafts. That privileged white male ruling class seems terribly outdated by today’s standards.
In addition to summer work, I often worked the 5:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. shift on rewrite many evenings during the school year. There were three of us sitting at typewriters on stands, taking directions from the night news editor. I also worked on the student paper, The Gazette, where senior people would graduate thereby creating openings at the top. I started in first year by writing briefs, those one-paragraph items filling out a story at the bottom of the page. By third year, I was the managing editor. |
Hooked in high school, I soon became enthralled by the process and the product of writing. I was lucky to find my vocation so early in life. Some people never find the work that they love.

BlackBerry Down

My book on BlackBerry, published in 2010, took four years, twice as long as any other book I’d written at the time. Convincing the company to grant access was a lengthy effort. Even then, getting interviews on a timely basis was problematic. In all my years as a journalist and author, I’d never run across such a poorly organized company.
The book came out in March 2010 when the popularity of BlackBerry was at its peak with 75 million sold and a 50 percent share of the U.S. smartphone market. Another book, Losing the Signal, by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, published in 2015, tells how that market share fell to one percent. Their book became the basis for a new movie, BlackBerry, which I saw at a Toronto preview last night. 
As for the co-CEOs of BlackBerry, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, Balsillie’s hard-nosed style is well captured; the thoughtful approach of Lazaridis less so. The movie takes a while to get rolling and then never really catches fire. Worse, the cinematic version takes real life tales and alters them for no apparent reason. At one point, for example, the two men meet with a carrier in New York. They mistakenly leave behind in a taxi the prototype they plan to show the group. Lazaridis goes to find it, leaving Balsillie, who does not know how the handheld will work, fumbling a presentation that ends with him saying, “You’re selling self-reliance.”
In real life, as related in my book, the 1997 meeting was with BellSouth executives in Atlanta. The two lost prototypes, known internally as Leapfrog, were retrieved from the taxi. Made of wood, each measured about 2×3 inches, had a plastic “screen” with half a dozen printed lines listing emails. The keyboard was pasted on with “keys” in an arc, and there was a pretend thumbwheel on the side. Despite this simplistic offering, so smitten were these grown men that they excitedly waited their turn as they passed around what was little more than a dressed-up child’s toy. Why alter a lively story that set in motion an early order for what became the BlackBerry?
Balsillie attended the preview and participated in a question-and-answer session after the movie was shown. He took issue with some of the film’s interpretations but admitted he was happy to be in the limelight no matter what the cinematographers had done. While I admire his pluck, I can’t say that I recommend the movie.

The King and I

When Elizabeth II died last September, I declared in this space that I was a monarchist. My fealty continues to her son and heir, Charles III. I thought that once Her Highness died, there would be a groundswell of acrimonious debate in Canada about ending our links to the Royal Family. But even as Coronation Day approaches next week, on May 6, there has hardly been a peep on the topic until a recent Angus Reid poll showed that 60 percent of Canadians are against recognizing Charles as King. A bare majority, 52 percent, don’t want Canada to continue as a constitutional monarchy. Still, whatever the numbers, any public protest has been puny.
Charles certainly has had a sufficient apprenticeship for the job, spending 64 years as Prince of Wales and heir apparent. The previous record-holder of the title, Prince of Wales, became Edward VII in 1901 after 60 years in the saddle. I visit “Bertie,” as he was known during his lifetime, in his current saddle – an equestrian statue – in Queen’s Park on my regular walks. I always offer a military salute, or as much as I can muster as a civilian who never served except as an army cadet for two years in high school.
Charles has unquestionably paid attention to Canada over the years. He first visited in 1970 and has been seventeen times since including more trips to northern Canada than very few of us citizens ever make.
I have a related Royal worry. A statue of Elizabeth II that has been in storage for six years will soon be unveiled in a prize location in front of the Ontario Legislature. According to an article in the Globe and Mail, the statue and its pedestal are seven metres tall and the whole thing will sit on a three-metre granite plinth that will mean the total installation will rise ten metres. That’s more than thirty feet, or the equivalent of about three floors in an office building.
A couple of weeks ago I wrote to the man in charge of the grounds, the Honourable Ted Arnott, speaker of the Legislative Assembly, expressing my concern that the whole contrivance could look monstrous and totally out of proportion to all of the other statues. I await his reply. After all, someone’s got to defend the memory of our Queen.